The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, July 1, 2016

Maybe
that’s the hidden agenda for both American political parties; not if,
but when Israel is to be thrown to Mohamed’s wolves. A win for Clinton,
promises more of the same, a kind of hideous end game for homeland
Jews. A defeat of Hillary in 2016 offers the possibility of a change in
American policy.

Hillary Clinton has a lot going for her in 2016. Among her primary assets we might list genitals (aka “first woman”), Bill’s and Barack’s coattails, pastel pant suits, felons, feminists, plus sizes, dependents, gender benders, hyphenated minorities, and anti-Semites. Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have much in the way of achievements, but she does have a grab bag of constituents, a checkered past, and a righteous resume.

Alas, like husband Bill, her history, no matter how shady, doesn’t seem to matter. Indeed, Hillary may go in the books as the second no-fault presidential candidate in American history. Her resume, indeed, is an artfully contrived vitae where election, appointment, or position has hip-checked character, failure, and achievement deficits out of the public square.

Nevertheless, Hillary’s coterie of anti-Semites is a unique group that provides a window on probable foreign policy vectors of another Clinton presidency. Three of the more notorious American Jew haters have been flagged by their appointment to the 2016 Democrat Platform Committee.

Mohammad by Salvatore Dali

In order of descending importance they are: Arabist James Zogby, Princeton pedant Cornel West, and Congressman Keith Ellison, representing the Minnesota caliphate. On paper, all three are supposed to be Sanders’s delegates. Yet, their mere presence in Democrat inner circles says all that needs to be said about the American Left, Islamophiles, and attitudes towards Jews and Israel.

James Zogby

James Zogby, the Arab lobbyist, is not to be confused with John Zogby the pollster. The two are, in some respects, in the same business. Still, they are not the same person. Although, they are family; literal and liberal Lebanese Arab brothers with common interests.

James made a career in the “non-profit” rackets, mainly Arab American advocacy groups like Arab American Institute and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The AAI is the “political and policy research arm of the Arab-American community.” The emphasis here is clearly on the adjective. Both brothers are good examples of the hyphenated politics that balkanize the American left.

James Zogby served with the Gore and Obama campaigns and he is a visiting professor at NYU, Abu Dhabi campus. The elder Zogby is also a member of the executive committee of the Democratic Party. James Zogby’s anti-Israel credentials include rabid support for terrorist Hezb’allah, frequent condemnations of Israel, and characterizations of Jews as “Nazis.”

James Zogby makes the top of the DNC anti-Semite list because between him and his brother, they are capable of spinning news, opinion, and any associated Arab, Muslim, or jihad propaganda.

Cornel West

Other than Louis Farrakhan at the Nation of Islam, Professor Cornel West of Princeton might be the signal anti-Semitic role model in black America. West brings academic gravitas to the role. On the one hand, West plays the home boy race card with effect, at the same time vilifying Jews for “occupation and annihilation.”

West’s favorite media stooge is Tavis Smiley of PBS. Professor West and Smiley are often seen as an Islamophilia tag team, apologizing for Muslims on the public dime. Anti-Semitism is now a prominent feature of black American culture nationwide. Professor West and Smiley count Louis Farrakhan, NOI high priest, unapologetic misogynist, and Jew hater, as a touchstone in skin game circles.

Up at Harvard, Professor Louis Gates is a study in contrast. Gates uses his academic chops honestly, recognizing the role of black Africans and Muslims in historical and contemporary slavery. Boko Haram takes a bow here. Gates also recognizes the corrosive effects of epidemic anti-Semitism among blacks in America. Legit scholars like Louis Gates, needless to say, play no role in the DNC “diversity” mix on the 2016 Platform Committee.

Keith Ellison

Keith Ellison is the American face of stealth Jihad and another “first” phenomenon on two counts. He is the first black and the first Muslim congressman from Minnesota. Keith is also a converso, a former Catholic, like Lew Alcindor, converted to Islam when black rage and Islam was hip. Congressman Ellison is most famous for taking his oath of office from Nancy Pelosi in Washington on a Koran.

Ellison has been cagey about his conversion, but his ties to the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan are matters of record. He has written in support of Farrakhan on more than one occasion under a pseudonym. Ellison also has extensive personal, political, and financial ties to the American Muslim jihad net through such organizations as Council on American Islamic Relations, Muslim American Society, Islamic Society of North America, Muslim public Affairs Council, North American Imams Federation, and the notorious Saudi funded American Open University in Virginia, a kind of seminary for Muslim clerics.

Former AOU chairman Ja’far Sheikh Idris considers American democracy to be “the antithesis of Islam.” He also claims that no one “can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to divine (Islamic) law.”

If the telltales on the DNC Platform Committee say anything, Hillary Clinton, like her husband and Barack Obama, is unlikely to do anything about growing anti-Semitism at home or the Arab/Muslim tilt abroad.

Most American Jews, ironically, already lean left. Likewise, black America is a veritable liberal or Democratic Party plantation. When irredentist Muslims are thrown into the mix, the stew in “progressive” America becomes a critical mass of anti- Israel, anti-Jew bigotry.

Political diagnosticians argue that American Jews vote with, and fund, the Democratic Party because the diaspora sees classic liberalism, separation of church and state, as the bedrock of survival. The argument suggests that conservative Christians make Jews nervous, given the history of Church persecution. In fact, today’s evangelical Christians are more ardent supporters of Israel than so-called J-Street Jews. On the darker side, American blacks and Muslims of all stripes are close to monolithically anti-Israel, if not wholly anti-Semitic.

The great irony of the Mideast, question today is that secular social democracy in the West has aligned itself with the ferocious theocrats of the Muslim right. Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iran, and Turkey are but four prominent examples. The Muslim tilt inside the Beltway transcends American political parties now; both still subscribe to the “two state’ fantasy, a placebo that should have expired with the rise of Hezb’allah,al Qaeda, and ISIS. Traditional Palestinian terror groups are now outflanked on the religious right by state-sponsored Shia and Sunni fanatics worldwide.

Indeed, one of the most prominent sponsors of Islamist religious mayhem today is a clueless American administration that supports theocracy in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey; again, just to name a few American “allies,” – in practice toxic state-sponsors of anti-Semitism, Arab terror factions, and lethal Islamic jihad.

Barack Hussein Obama may not qualify as an out anti-Semite. Yet he is clearly the most hostile American president since 1948. There is no evidence to suggest that Hillary Clinton attitudes towards Jews and Israel will be different.

Terror has become so commonplace, that after each atrocity these days, liberal America immediately changes the subject. Call it terror fatigue. Take the recent Orlando homosexual kill, if you read a newspaper, or listen to the administration, you are led to believe that Bill of Rights and not the Koran was the inspiration or cause of the massacre.

Outlook

If Hamas and Fatah were to make a real deal with Israel today, al Qaeda and the Islamic State would make short work of those Palestinian factions tomorrow. If Jews were to accommodate those same terrorists tomorrow, such a pact would be a death warrant for Jews too. A Palestinian state is not a peace plan anymore so much as suicide pact for Fatah, Hamas - and Israel.

Maybe that’s the hidden agenda for both American political parties; not if, but when Israel is to be thrown to Mohamed’s wolves. A win for Clinton, promises more of the same, a kind of hideous end game for homeland Jews. A defeat of Hillary in 2016 offers the possibility of a change in American policy.

Surely, Israel cannot bleed forever.

Insh’alla!

G. Murphy Donovanwrites about the politics of national security.Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/hillarys_coterie_of_antisemites.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The recent statement from a senior Defense Ministry official that “thenext round must be the last one for the Hamas government” reveals a deep misunderstanding of the Hamas-Israel confrontation.

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 345, June 30, 2016

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The recent statement from a senior Defense Ministry official that “thenext round must be the last one for the Hamas government” reveals a deep misunderstanding of the Hamas-Israel confrontation.The
use of massive force in a “once-and-for-all” military operation cannot
purge Hamas from Gaza because it has deep roots in Palestinian society.
Even if the Hamas military machine were demolished, the organization’s
civilian infrastructure would continue to exist. Israel’s only sensible
option is to continue to employ a militarily modest and politically
calibrated “mowing the grass” strategy, which is designed to
occasionally knock back Hamas military capabilities and enhance
deterrence for an admittedly limited period.

A senior Defense Ministry source in Israel said recently that a
confrontation with Hamas is inevitable, and the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) must be prepared for it. The source added, significantly, that
“the next round must be the last one for the Hamas government.”

Such a statement reveals a deep misunderstanding of both Israel’s
opponent and Israel’s predicament. Hamas is indeed an implacable enemy
of Israel. Its ideological commitment to the destruction of the Jewish
state is enshrined in its covenant and is propagated in all
Hamas-sponsored educational organs. Hamas has acted on its hatred by
organizing numerous suicide bomber attacks, by digging tunnels to
facilitate the perpetration of terrorist attacks, and by launching
thousands of rockets toward Israel’s towns and cities. It deserves to be
the target of Israeli military action.

However, it is a mistake to believe that it is possible to root Hamas
out of Gaza and destroy its capabilities once and for all. There is no
one-shot solution to the Hamas military/terrorist challenge.

Despite assertions to the contrary by the Israeli right, the end of
Hamas rule is not an easily attainable military objective. The roots of
Hamas are deep in Palestinian society, particularly in Gaza. Polls
consistently show that 35 percent of Palestinians look with favor upon
Hamas; and in Gaza, the level of support is always higher. A recent poll
indicates that if new presidential elections were to be held right now
in the West Bank and Gaza, Hamas’s candidate Ismail Haniyeh would do
better than Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas simply cannot be eradicated by outsiders conquering Gaza and
then politically reengineering Palestinian society. One cannot import a
leadership of choice. Even if Hamas rule could be terminated, its
civilian infrastructure would continue to exist.

The calls from the Israeli left for a “political solution” are
similarly unrealistic. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Salafist groups see
Israel as a theological aberration. They might reluctantly accept
temporary cease-fires, but they continue to categorically reject any
diplomatic course of action intended to fully solve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The fanatical commitment of these militias
to a radical ideology and to a patient strategy of violent resistance (muqawama) means the conflict will continue for some time.

Israel must be realistic about what can be achieved by military
means. Force should be applied not to attain impossible political goals,
but in the service of a long-term strategy of attrition designed to
debilitate enemy capabilities and exact a cost with the object of
enhancing temporary deterrence.

A pounding from the air and an Israeli ground advance, for example,
can demolish part of the Hamas military infrastructure and kill Hamas
fighters. A ground offensive can create unrest within the Hamas
organization, causing its military leadership to make mistakes that
could result in better intelligence and more successful targeted
airstrikes. The destruction of the terror tunnels – which are themselves
an exaggerated threat – is also an attainable military goal. Moreover,
occasional large-scale operations have a temporary deterrent effect that
creates periods of quiet along Israel’s borders.

As the rounds of violence with Hamas continue and the prospects for a
peaceful resolution grow ever more remote, an understandable
frustration arises at the lack of a clear military endgame. But military
force can be useful in limited wars, even without a conflict-ending
objective. Hamas needs to be punished for its aggression and reminded of
the cost it must pay for continuing its violence against Israel. And on
a practical level, a period of calm can be achieved by destroying
capabilities that are both difficult and expensive to rebuild. Buying
time is a legitimate military goal.

The greater goal is the establishment of a reality in which Israeli
residents can go about their lives without the continuing threat of
indiscriminate terror, and in which a significant blow has been struck
to Hamas's terror infrastructure. So far, the Israeli government has
wisely adopted these limited political and military goals, a strategy
dubbed “mowing the grass”.

This strategy has a positive effect both within and beyond the
borders of the conflict. Other actors in the Middle East are watching,
and they too need vivid reminders that aggression against Israel can be
costly. In this tough neighborhood, inaction is perceived as weakness,
harming deterrence and inviting aggression.

In the last round of the conflict with Hamas, Israel showed its
neighbors that Israel’s missile defense can parry missile threats while
maintaining relative normalcy on the home front. Israel also signaled
its determination to fight back through its readiness to engage in
ground operations despite the potential for casualties.

The question “When will this end?" is inherently flawed. There is,
unfortunately, no end in sight. As long as the basic motivations of
Hamas remain, the violent struggle will continue. But this does not mean
that significant periods of quiet cannot be achieved by military
action.

Israeli strategic thinking is substantively different from current
Western strategic thinking on the question of how to deal with non-state
military challenges. Westerners are more solution-oriented, which
partially explains why so many of them misunderstand Israel’s approach.

Against an implacable, well-entrenched, non-state foe like Hamas,
Israel has to “mow the grass” once in a while to degrade enemy
capabilities. Israel will probably be engaged in a war of attrition
against Hamas for a long time. Keeping the enemy off balance and
reducing its capabilities will require Israeli military readiness and a
willingness to use force intermittently, while maintaining a healthy and
resilient Israeli home front despite the protracted conflict.

PDFBESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler FamilyProf. Efraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat-Center for Strategic Studies, is Professor Emeritus of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, and the Shillman/Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum.Source: http://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/no-one-shot-solution-hamas-challenge/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Dutch opposition leader Geert Wilders discusses
the dangers of the Islamization of the West and the growing influence
of Sharia law. He outlines his plans to defend the identity and
civilization of the West from indoctrination.

… And the mindset that permitted the Orlando massacre to take place.

Good ol' Barack Obama. So deeply do he and his administration
love America, that they felt secure enough in their own patriotism to
appoint an America-hating radical to the Homeland Security Advisory
Council’s Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism (SCVE). After
all, they undoubtedly reasoned, what possible harm could such an
individual do in that kind of a setting? Perhaps you've heard of her—a
young woman named Laila Alawa, born to Syrian parents who immigrated to the United States when the girl was ten. Soon after she became a U.S. citizen in April 2015, Ms. Alawa wrote: “I will always be Syrian. I will always be from Syria. I will always be of Syria.” Ain't that nice? Ms. Alawa has long regarded the United States as a nation that oppresses and abuses Muslims, as she explained in a July 2014 piece which she wrote for The Guardian.
Therein, Alawa says that ever since her arrival in America, she has
“learned to view” law-enforcement officials and “my new government” with
“a certain level of suspicion”—particularly after 9/11, when “stories
of warrantless deportations, faith-based workplace discrimination (and
termination), and arrests that resulted in unending detention were
common.” Citing the “constant surveillance, government stings and
wannabe informants” to which she believes Muslims in the U.S. are being
subjected, Alawa laments that “my long-held suspicions have been
confirmed—the knowledge that my faith makes me suspicious in the eyes of
the government to which I've pledged my allegiance.... We know that
we're often discriminated against by our government and our fellow
Americans.” This young woman has a very bright future in the
Democratic Party if she wants it. Heck, she already sounds downright
Hillary-esque, and she's only 25! Alawa regularly disseminates views like these in her work as an opinion writer for The Guardian, Salon, Glamour, The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, and The Islamic Monthly. Further, she hosts The Exposé, a weekly podcast “tackling tough topics with snark and wit.” In addition, this multi-talented woman is also a self-described
“online activis[t]” whose mission is “to elevate the voices of those
who are often not heard.” Her Twitter posts are rife with allegations of
— (what else?) — American racism and “Islamophobia.” Some examples:

“I can't deal with people saying America is the best nation in the world. Be critical. Be conscious. Don't be idiots.”

On April 15, 2013, Alawa responded to activist Pamela Geller's assertion that the Boston Marathon bombings of that day were acts of “jihad” by tweeting: “go fuck yourself.”

“We are living in a country that deems it ‘freedom of speech’ to spew
absolutely hateful ish [slang for ‘sh**’] about Muslims.”

“9/11 is your day to pull out your flag themed clothing, and my day [as a Muslim] to look behind my back as I walk home.”

“... I can’t wait until
[the television program] @TheBachelor has a man or woman be the star of
the show that isn’t pure white. Or ‘prettily mixed.’ Because, Ya know,
@TheBachelor, white people in America? They’re not gonna be dominant
majority for much longer.”

“THE US HAS NEVER BEEN A UTOPIA UNLESS YOU WERE A STRAIGHT WHITE MALE THAT OWNED LAND. straight up period go home shut up.”

“Being American [after 9/11] meant you were white. And my immigrant
self started fighting for the right to be just as American.”

In September 2015—the day after Secretary of State John Kerry had announced
that the U.S. was planning to accept some 185,000 Syrian refugees
during 2016-17—Alawa mocked the “Salty white tears all over my
newsfeed.” Her implication was that many white people opposed the plan
because they were anti-Muslim bigots.

Pretty snarky and witty stuff, huh? Another tweet that drew much attention to Alawa was her 2014 assertion that “9/11 changed the world for good, and there’s no other way to say it.” Alawa later claimed that
her use of the term “for good” meant “permanently” and was not intended
to suggest that the terrorist attacks were positive events. Who knows?
Maybe that's true, but in light of her many other remarks, it hardly
matters. In 2015, this shining beacon of anti-Americanism was one of 15 people whom the Obama DHS appointed to serve on the newly formed SCVE, which sought to promote the notion that authentic Islam is a perfectly peaceful faith that has nothing whatsoever to do with the nearly 29,000 terrorist attacks that have been committed in its name since 9/11. In June 2016, this Subcommittee issued a report recommending that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) de-emphasize Islam's
terrorist ties by devoting more attention to the transgressions of
“anarchists, sovereign citizens, white-supremacists, and others.” The
Subcommittee also advised that the DHS—in order to avoid offending Muslims—should begin “using
American English instead of religious, legal and cultural terms like
‘jihad,’ ‘sharia,’ ‘takfir’ or ‘umma’” when discussing terrorism.
All in all, this DHS Subcommittee was the perfect forum for a young
anti-American radical in search of an audience of likeminded comrades,
like Laila Alawa. Moreover, it was a forum that echoed, with perfect
fidelity, the very same Obama policies that quite demonstrably and indisputably caused
the FBI to close its file on the jihadist who subsequently went on to
slaughter 49 people in Orlando two weeks ago. Nice work, Mr. President.
Nice work.

John PerazzoSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263336/america-hating-obama-homeland-security-appointee-john-perazzo Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

--herein lies the problem: in many ways, the two cultures are
ultimately irreconcilable. There is no middle ground. And hence, the
conflicts and the tugs-of-war continue

"Clash
of civilizations," some say. Others call it the "failure of
multiculturalism." Either way, the cultural conflicts between some
Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide continue to play out as Western
countries struggle to reconcile their own cultures with the demands of a
growing Muslim population.

But herein lies the problem: in many ways, the two cultures are
ultimately irreconcilable. There is no middle ground. And hence, the
conflicts and the tugs-of-war continue.

Over the past two months, the events surrounding controversial Dutch
columnist Ebru Umar have encapsulated that "clash" at its core, a
salient metaphor for the tensions, particularly in Europe, between the
West's Muslim populations and its own. More, they illuminate the
enormity of the problems we still face.

Umar is no stranger to the spotlight, or to the wrath of Dutch
Muslims who read her many columns, most of them published in the free
newspaper, Metro. For years, the Dutch-born daughter of secular
Turkish immigrants has raged against the failure of other Dutch-born
children of immigrants, mostly Moroccan, to assimilate into the culture
of their birth. She loudly condemns Dutch-Moroccan families for the
shockingly high rates of criminality and violence among Dutch-Moroccan
boys – as much as 22 times the rate
of Dutch native youth – a phenomenon she ascribes to their Islamic
upbringing and their parents' refusal to allow their children to mingle
among the Dutch.

But her critiques have earned her no converts. Instead,
Dutch-Moroccan youth, whom she calls "Mocros," have regularly taunted
her, both online and in the street.

This past April, however, Umar added a new team of enemies to her
portfolio: when, in response to Turkish president Recep Tayyip
Erodogan's demand that a German satirist be prosecuted for insulting him
on TV, Umar tweeted "f***erdogan," Dutch Turks turned on her
in fury. "How dare you insult our president!" cried these Dutch-born
subjects of Holland's King Willem-Alexander. And while Umar took a brief
holiday on the Turkish coast, one such Dutch-Turk turned her in to the
police. She was arrested at her vacation home in Kusadasi, and though
released the following day, was forbidden to leave the country. The
charge: Insulting the Turkish president. It took 17 days before
discussions between Holland's prime minister and Turkish authorities
enabled her to return to the Netherlands.

But she could not return home. In her absence, Umar's home had been
burgled and vandalized, the word "whore" scrawled on a stairway wall.
Death threats followed her both in Turkey and on her return. When it
became clear she could not ever return to the apartment she had lived in
for nearly 20 years, she announced on Twitter (Ebru Umar posts
constantly on Twitter) that she would be moving out.

Meantime, in Metro and elsewhere, she continued her criticism of Moroccans and, as she herself notes, of Islam overall.

And so it was that on the day Ebru Umar moved out of her apartment in
Amsterdam, a group of Dutch-Moroccans in their twenties came to see her
off, taunting her
with chants: Ebru has to mo-o-ve, nyah nyah." Though furious, she
ignored them – until one of them began to film her loading her
belongings into her car. For Umar, being taunted by the very people
whose threats had forced her from her home in the first place was bad
enough: but this violation of what little privacy remained for her was
more than she could take. She grabbed her iPhone and began filming them
right back. "Go ahead," she challenged. "Say it for the camera."

Scuffles ensued, and soon one of the Moroccans had her iPhone
in his hand. The others laughed. Then they ran away. Umar filed a
police report and, still smarting, took to Twitter once again: "C**t
Moroccans, I hate you," she posted. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,
I hate you and I hate your Muslim brothers and sisters, too. F**k you
all." (It is important to note that, however offensive, the expression
"c**t Moroccans" is a common epithet in the Netherlands.)

But, hey – she was angry. Her phone had been snatched from her hand
in a brutal, aggressive gesture that left her feeling violated and,
vulnerable. She had just been forced to leave her home. She had endured
prison, a criminal inquiry, and death threats, all at the hands of the
same group on whom she now spewed her fury.

Her words may have been harsh or inappropriate, but they were words.
She had not struck her tormenters as they filmed her. She did not call
for their demise, or strap a bomb around her waist and visit the local
mosques.

She took to Twitter and said: I hate you.

"But hate," she tells me later in an e-mail, "is just an emotion."
And in a column penned more than two years ago, she observed, "Hate me
till you're purple, but keep your claws off me."

Here is where Ebru Umar's story becomes the story of the Western
world. In response to her words ("I hate you. F*** you"), several
Muslims – Moroccans and others – filed charges against her
for hate speech. (Though ironically, "I hate you" does not legally
qualify as "hate speech.") Such words are an attack upon their honor, a
humiliation: and if there is one thing experts on Arab and Muslim
culture will agree on, it is the significance of humiliation and honor
in governing their lives. For this, Dutch Moroccan youth threaten Umar
on the streets, and have done so, she says, for years: after all, she
insults them.

But
in truth, it isn't just the youth. The broader Muslim community stands
by, silent: they do not condemn the youth who taunt her, who rip her
telephone from her hands, or post things on the Internet like "We hate you, too – can you please kill yourself?" or "Oh, how I hope she ends up like Theo van Gogh."

Theo van Gogh, also a controversial columnist, was shot and stabbed to death
in 2014 by a radical Dutch-Moroccan Muslim.The commenter wishing her
the same fate used the name "IzzedinAlQassam," the founder of modern
Palestinian jihad, and an icon of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

For people like this, it doesn't matter that Umar – or van Gogh –
inflicted no violence, any more than it mattered that the editors of Charlie Hebdo
were not violent. It was the insult, the humiliation – to them, to
Islam, to Mohammed – that mattered: and an insult, a humiliation,
deserves a violent response.

Indeed, much of the Muslim violence in Europe is about exactly this:
intimidating non-Muslims into a fearful capitulation, where words like
"I hate Muslims" and drawings of Mohammed become extinct because the
Muslim communities insist that it be so. It is about forcing Westerners
to rearrange their lives, their culture, to accommodate the needs and
values and culture of Islam. It is about control, and the power over
freedom. And it is about creating a culture in which honor is injured by
words and restored through violence and terror.

When Umar says "I hate you," what she hates, really, isn't the
Moroccans who attacked her or their "Muslim brothers and sisters." What
she hates is this – this effort, this battle over honor and speech and
freedom, and this clash between violence and expression, guns and
conversation.

"I don't want Muslims to leave," she tells me, again by e-mail. "I
want them to embrace the Enlightenment, Western society, the
Netherlands." And in turn, she calls on the Dutch to "set rules: no
violence in any sense. And stop using culture or religion as an excuse
for behavior."

Ebru Umar's words. More of us should listen.

Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning freelance writer based in New
York and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with more than 20 years of
experience writing for national and international magazines including Salon.com,
Vogue, Esquire (Holland), Town & Country, Art & Auction (where
she is a contributing editor), The Christian Science Monitor, Foreign
Policy, The New Republic, Artnews and others.Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/5476/anger-honor-and-freedom-what-european-muslims Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Soon
enough I realized that many of the “Zionists” spoke my dialectal
Arabic. Many knew my country better than myself and could tell stories
of their ancestors who had thrived before I even saw the light

Until not so long ago, a nation and its citizens were not even named because they simply did not have an earthly existence for most Arabs. It was one of the many anachronistic taboos prevailing in my part of the world…Millions of Arabs were not allowed to publicly acknowledge the existence of that far-away, mysterious, and too many times promised land. Arabs called it the “Zionist Entity”! The Eternal enemy, a land where Evil was presiding and enslaving our “Palestinian brethren”. Were Algerian schoolchildren so mischievous to deserve such horrific tales? Our teachers in elementary school, most of them members or sympathizers of the Egyptian, Syrian, or Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, believed so, and as such, they imposed on us the hatred of the “Zionists”, because the “Zionists” were not human beings but rather ferocious beasts whose fate would ultimately be sealed by Allah...I grew up, studied in the best schools and universities overseas, learned different languages, traveled extensively, and became an adult…with an open mind.However, the “Zionist Entity” remained a mystery for me…From time to time, the opportunity presented itself where I could recognize the language of the “Zionists”. I would stare at them with curiosity and bewilderment…After all, weren’t they the evil people who stole the land of our brethren? I must confess my disappointment when I encountered my first “Zionist”. He was no different than me. His physical appearance seemed all human: a head, two arms, two legs…Nothing suspicious there. And he was not even biting a dagger between his jaws. Strange…The Muslim Brothers of my elementary school taught me otherwise. Soon enough I realized that many of the “Zionists” spoke my dialectal Arabic. Many knew my country better than myself and could tell stories of their ancestors who had thrived before I even saw the light…. I was born in Constantine, the home of the largest “Zionist” community in Algeria for hundreds of years… It was not the end of my surprises. These “Zionists” started to look exactly like me. There must be a trick. So I thought the only way to unmask them was to visit the “Zionist Entity” myself and explore their hideout….In 2006, I took an El AL flight out of New York. Direction: Tel Aviv. The plane was full of “Zionists”. I felt nervous, not at ease. What would happen to me if they, I mean the “Zionists”, would unmask me instead? After all, I was probably the only Muslim, Arab, and holder of the “truth of the final revelation” traveling incognito on a journey of a lifetime. I was relieved when we landed at Tel Aviv airport, named after their first leader, a certain David Ben-Gurion…I knew he gave a lot of hard time to the Arabs back in the 40’s. On my way to Jerusalem, my eyes swallowed passionately anything that was offered to them: the landscape, so similar to my native Algeria, the human buzz…The highway was impeccable. The drive didn’t last more than an hour. And here I was, in Jerusalem of all places…The city of the 3 monotheistic religions. No word could genuinely describe the emotions I felt when I smelled the air of Jerusalem. So far, so good…I spent one full week in the land of the “Zionists”…I made sure to visit everything in Jerusalem: The Western Wall, the Temple Mount, the Saint-Sepulcher. The whole city was an open book dating 5000 years…I went to Cesarea of Herod the Great and had a picnic overlooking the blue Mediterranean Sea and the Roman ruins; I visited the art galleries of Tel Aviv and hooked up with the carefree local art scene; I enjoyed the fresh St-Peter’s fish in Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee; I got drunk with the robust red wine from the Golan; I got all muddy in the Dead Sea; I admired the Judea desert from Masada; I lunched in a kibbutz…I also visited Nazareth, the city of Christ and listened carefully to the Communist Arab mayor denouncing the “occupation”. I asked him whether he would gladly move to a future Palestinian State…No answer was given. But I can guess it. But what about the original purpose of my trip you may ask? Uncovering the “Zionists”, remember? Oh yes, them!! I don’t call them “Zionists” any longer. They were never the “Zionists” for me in the first place. They are human beings first and foremost. They worked hard and fought five wars to make their “entity” a self-reliant and a highly performing one. When man wins over adversity, when the desert is no longer an obstacle to abundance, when one can enjoy bananas grown in a kibbutz by the Dead Sea, I call it a miracle made reality because human progress is within our grasp. The “Zionists” call themselves Israelis. They are proud of their country. And rightly so.. I am proud to count them among my friends. And I have no shame to state my admiration for their achievements. I have one big regret though: we, Arabs, did not embrace the same path of progress, human effort, and modernity like our cousins. Instead, we preferred the path of delusional and nihilistic ideologies that led to decay, withdrawal, intolerance, and denial not only of the Israeli reality but of our own. We blame our misfortunes and failures on the rest of the world, primarily, Israel. Instead of learning from our setbacks, we turned our back to civilization by sowing the ground for the new prophets of the Islamo-fascists of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Boko haram and others… But that’s another (sad) story…So, am I a traitor, a sell-out, an apostate now? For those fanatics, I certainly am the worst pupil of the Muslim Brotherhood class. And I am proud of it! From a super-light Muslim…Shalom Israel! Zakaria FellahLondon, 21 April 2015 Source: AuthorFollow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Why would the Attorney General, who sets the tone for law enforcement, do this?

According to the report the meeting was not a chance encounter but was
apparently an arranged meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch
on board her government airplane.

The appearance this meeting
creates, in and of itself, calls into question the judgment of the
Attorney General of the United States - America's "Top Cop" who sets the
tone for law enforcement for the entire federal government and, as a
consequence, for law enforcement agencies at all levels from coast to
coast and border to border.

And make no mistake - appearances
can be critical. This was a message that was repeatedly hammered home by
my bosses when I served as a Special Agent for the former INS
(Immigration and Naturalization Service).

Let me describe two
such instances in order to properly set the stage and provide a bit of
context to the meeting between the former president of the United States
and the Attorney General.

When I began my career as a special
agent back in the 1970's one of my bosses, a gentleman by the name of
Frank Johnson who was the section chief for the Frauds Unit where I was
assigned, would hold what were known as "Payday Meetings" because every
other Thursday we would stand on line and be issued out paychecks- this
was long before direct deposit was implemented. These meeting provided
management with an opportunity to inform the agents about any changes in
priorities and to provide us with whatever information they deemed was
essential to enable us to to our jobs effectively and safely. These
meetings also provided agents to inform each other about any information
that they might need as they pursued their assigned investigations.

At the conclusion of each of those meetings, Frank Johnson would
accentuate each syllable by jabbing his ever-present cigarette in the
air as he looked around the room and said, "As federal agents, it was
not enough that we never engaged in wrong doing- but that we must never
give the illusion of doing wrong!"

We knew that Frank
was not just spouting a slogan- because he held himself to a higher
standard than he held those of us who worked under him- this is what
true leadership is all about.

As for the second incident - I
had become an agent just months earlier and was eating lunch at a local
restaurant located across the street from our offices in lower
Manhattan, when an attorney I had met when I was assigned as an
Adjudications Officer or Examiner as those who adjudicated various
applications for immigration benefits were known. The attorney had
represented several aliens I had interviewed in that earlier assignment
and conducted those marriage interviews you likely have seen in various
movies about aliens who marry citizens to acquire lawful immigrant
status.

I had just order[ed] desert at the end of my meal when the
attorney who, like myself, was sitting at the counter of the restaurant
move[d] next to me to engage in innocuous banter. Suddenly one of my
supervisors noticed me as he was walking by the restaurant and quickly
entered the restaurant. He walked up to me and whispered in my ear, "Mr.
Cutler, when you are finished with your lunch you are to report
directly to my office." He quickly left the restaurant and I quickly
headed back to my office and went to his office- with quite a bit of
consternation. Clearly he was not happy.

He sat me down in his
office and told me that by sitting next to that lawyer in that
restaurant, I created the illusion that I would be less than totally
objective in investigating the cases that the attorney was involved
with. This, he sternly told me, creates the impression of corruption and
must never, ever happen again.

I explained that the lawyer
had approached me and that I paid for my food and he had paid for his
food and that the conversation was brief and had nothing to do about
work.

His response was quick and to the point - he told me that simply creating an appearance of impropriety could create enough of a problem to call my ethics into question and in so doing, destroy my career!

He explained that I always needed to be mindful of appearances and
that the next time an attorney tried to sit next to me I had the choice
of telling him to not change his seat or simply paying my check and
leaving the restaurant. There was no "wiggle room." He concluded our
conversation by telling me that he believed I unwittingly got caught in
an unfortunate situation and admonished me to be careful in the future.

Now we come back to the meeting between Mr. Clinton and Ms Lynch.
According to the published accounts, Bill Clinton knew in advance that
the Attorney General was going to be arriving on her government airplane
and visited with her in that aircraft for 30 minutes.

While Lynch claims that nothing was discussed that involved Hillary
Clinton- we only have her word for that. Furthermore, as the Attorney
General she would certainly have to cognizant about the appearance of a
major impropriety that her meeting with Bill Clinton created. The
obvious question is why would she do this?

Was she so
fascinated about Clinton's golf game or his grandchildren that she was
willing to create the illusion of wrong-doing? Was the meeting conducted
on her airplane to make certain that no one would be able to overhear
what was said? If so, what was the true topic of the conversation?

We can not and, indeed, must not lose sight of the fact that Loretta
Lynch has the authority to authorize criminal prosecutions. Hillary
Clinton is currently under investigation for a series of serious
allegations emanating from the disaster at Benghazi and as a result of
her having a private e-mail account and private server which, as it has
been shown, was used numerous times to transmit highly classified
information in violation of laws, regulations and procedures.

She has also provided contradictory information about these issues which
may be found to rise to the level of perjury - a felony. The person who
will ultimately have to decide whether or not that line has been
crossed is none other than Loretta Lynch.

This administration
has, time and time again, acted with contempt for the Constitution and
the Rule of Law. I have addressed the many ways in which the
administration has undermined any shred of integrity to the immigration
system.

Even as the president insists that our borders are
secure heroin is available in such abundance that notwithstanding the
historic levels of heroin addiction in the United States, the price of
heroin has never been lower. Heroin is not produced in the United States
and is totally illegal. The only way for heroin to be present in the
United States is for it to be smuggled across those supposedly "secure
borders."

A series of Congressional hearings have shown how
tens of thousand of criminal aliens have been released back onto the
streets of towns and cities and have gone on to kill and assault many
innocent people.

The administration has taken to the
unprecedented practice of issuing executive orders and misused
"prosecutorial discretion" to provide hundreds of thousands of illegal
aliens with lawful status without any legal justification.

In
the face of unambiguous statements about the inability of our officials
to vet Syrian refugees and the clear warning of John Brennan, the
Director of the CIA, that ISIS is seeking to infiltrate terrorists into
the United States by embedding them among those claiming to be refugees,
the administration is admitting tens of thousands of aliens who claim
to be Syrian Refugees- but there is no way to verify their identities,
their true countries of citizens or their claims of being refugees.

These and other actions have undermined the trust of the American people where this administration is concerned.

Now we add to all of this the Attorney General's meeting with the
husband of the apparent Democratic Party's candidate for the presidency
who may face criminal charges- if the Attorney General decides
that the evidence provided by a small army of FBI agents assigned to the
investigation, meets the standards that require that the prosecution
proceeds.

The stakes could not be higher - yet Loretta Lynch
acted in a way that she should clearly understood created that illusion
of wrong-doing.

I know some federal agents who worked with
Loretta Lynch when she first became a federal prosecutor. They all had
positive impressions about her abilities and commitment to her job.

It is impossible to understand her motivation or what she was thinking
as she sat on her airplane meeting with Bill Clinton - but one thing is
now perfectly clear, she must recuse herself from any involvement in
the decision making process where the investigation/prosecution of
Hillary Clinton is concerned.

There is a good reason that "Lady Justice" wears a blindfold!

Michael Cutler is a retired Senior Special Agent of the former INS (Immigration and
Naturalization Service) whose career spanned some 30 years. He served as
an Immigration Inspector, Immigration Adjudications Officer and spent
26 years as an agent who rotated through all of the squads within the
Investigations Branch. For half of his career he was assigned to the
Drug Task Force. He has testified before well over a dozen congressional
hearings, provided testimony to the 9/11 Commission as well as state
legislative hearings around the United States and at trials where
immigration is at issue. He hosts his radio show, “The Michael Cutler Hour,” on Friday evenings on BlogTalk Radio. His personal website is http://michaelcutler.net/.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263356/loretta-lynchs-private-meeting-bill-clinton-prior-michael-cutler Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The New York Times really wants to continue believing that White House aide Ben Rhodes told the truth about Iran.

Originally published under the title "Even After Ben Rhodes Came Clean, New York Times Still Reports His Iran Lies as Truth."

The New York Times really wants to continue believing that White House aide Ben Rhodes told the truth about Iran.

"I want to believe," the slogan from The X-Files, seems to also be the operating principle for the New York Times regarding its coverage of Iran. The Times
continues to report on events in Iran as a series of meaningful
confrontations between "moderates" and "hard-liners" that will shape
Iran's behavior toward the U.S. -- even after the Times was directly told that the White House had lied about it.Central to the Obama administration's case for the Iran nuclear deal
was the narrative that the election of Hassan Rouhani and other Iranian
"moderates" made the deal possible. Deputy National Security Advisor for
Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes admitted, in a New York Times article no less, that such a story was "the center of the arc" of a narrative that was "largely manufactured" for the purpose of selling the deal.

Candidates for the Iran's presidency and parliament are pre-approved by the unelected Guardian Council.

The notion of an Iranian "moderate" controlling the regime was always
spurious on its face. Elections don't significantly affect major policy
decisions in Iran. People who stand for "election" for president and
Parliament must first be approved by an unelected body beholden to the
Supreme Leader. Iran is functionally a theocratic dictatorship.

And Rouhani is simply not a moderate, as Rhodes essentially admitted. Instead, he is a master deceiver.

However, and in spite of the implausibility of the narrative, not to
mention Rhodes having explained his cynical manipulation to the Times itself, the Times continues to insist on the centrality of this fictional "moderates/hard-liners" dynamic in understanding Iran's behavior.

Literally the day after the Times published Rhodes' explanation of his falsehoods, the Timesopened up its editorial page to excoriate not Iran, but the United States.

The notion of an Iranian 'moderate' controlling the regime was always spurious on its face.

Because international finance is still skittish, the Times was
concerned the U.S. might infuriate the "hard-liners" because some
Iranian sanctions were not lifted as part of the deal. I'm not sure what
is worse: the fact that the Times continued to play up the moderate/hard-liner narrative, or that it blamed the U.S. for not doing enough to placate the hard-liners.

Another story, published six days after the Rhodes mea culpa, played
up the moderate/hardliner narrative while ironically proving it false.

It seems that a woman, Minoo Khaleghi, was elected to Parliament -- but was ruled ineligible because she broke Iranian law by being photographed without her hijab, something she denies. The Times later reported on the "hardliners" more general crackdown on women who don't wear headscarves.

Assuming Ms. Khaleghi is a real moderate, her ineligibility proves again that hardliners hold all the power.

Such self-contradictory reporting has continued unabated with the
re-election of Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani. According to the Times, Larijani's landslide victory was a "mild surprise" since "reformists" had done so well in February elections.

It never occurred to the Times that Iranian officials' actions
might not match up with the "reformist" label. Even when "moderates"
win in Iran, they either aren't actually moderates or are not allowed to
hold power.

The idea that a moderate/hardliner conflict affects how the Iranian regime behaves toward the U.S. is false.

However, it just keeps reporting it as fact, and even Agent Mulder didn't want to believe that badly.

Clifford Smith is director of the Middle East Forum's Washington Project.Source: http://www.meforum.org/6095/new-york-times-ben-rhodes-iran Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.